Powered utilities are incorporated into the design of nearly every modern facility and therein provide a broad spectrum of functionality. To varying degrees the design of HVAC systems, lighting systems, alarm systems, communication systems, surveillance systems, and various other utilities has been conducted concurrently with the design of a facility from inception to completion for quite some time. However, modern utility systems often offer a staggering degree of functionality to their users as compared to simpler systems. For example, some modern utility systems include the ability to access the system through a digital control network. As these systems have increased in complexity and functionality, the need for advanced intelligent control systems has increased as well. These utility networks often include control systems implemented through the use of electronic microcontrollers embedded in the powered utility devices themselves.
The addition of a microcontroller to powered utilities opens up an entirely new level of potential functionality to a utility network. Microcontrollers are usually embedded on a printed circuit board in one of the final steps of the circuit board's assembly. This final step is fittingly referred to as printed circuit board assembly. In this step, one or more microcontrollers are connected to the circuit board. Microcontrollers are often connected through the use of solder material meant to provide structural support to the connection. Although a single main microcontroller will handle generalized control of the powered utility, various other microcontrollers can be added to handle auxiliary tasks such as providing a timer, managing bias circuitry, providing communication capabilities, and any other task that the powered utility must handle that requires built-in intelligence.
Given the wide range of functions that are available for certain powered utilities, the control systems on these utilities must necessarily be quite complex. Control systems that can provide this degree of functionality are therefore necessarily much more expensive as compared to control systems providing the minimum degree of functionality necessary to keep the utility in a standard operating state. However, not all customers deploying a powered utility system will require the same degree of functionality. One customer may only want a lighting system that can provide sufficient power to the lamp when light is desired while another may want a lighting system that dims, responds to motion sensors, takes commands from a digital network, and performs numerous other functions. In addition, these complex control systems can sometimes be spread out onto auxiliary boards that may make the overall assembly process more complex.
Approaches that split the control of a powered utility between elements on the main circuit board and one or more daughterboards address the problems described above. The term “daughterboard” is used because common terminology refers to the main circuit board in a system using the term “motherboard”. The term daughterboard is used to refer to a circuit board in a system which is separate from the main circuit board. Approaches using multiple circuit boards are focused on reducing the cost of creating a single system to function with variant powered utilities. For example, a control system that could potentially be connected to multiple kinds of lamps may implement the final power-providing stage on a daughterboard. The benefit of this type of system is that the same main controller and circuit board can be used for multiple lamps, while a particular lamp's characteristics will determine the daughterboard that can serve as said final stage. This approach could allow the same main controller and printed circuit board to be used with different types of lamps such as fluorescent, incandescent, or high intensity discharge lamps. Other related approaches are focused on the optimization of card assembly operations. For example, a microcontroller that is either the main controller or that provides some auxiliary functionality for a lighting device may require a different form of assembly operation as compared to the rest of the circuit board. Therefore, the main circuit board will undergo a first printed circuit board assembly process, and the additional circuitry will be added through different means after the initial assembly is complete.